The second guy had a length of heavy tow chain, and the last one carried a tire iron. Baseball Bat advanced on Joe, waving his weapon wildly and yelling, “Where’s the stuff? What you got? OCs? Boo? Ice? Tell me, old man!”

Joe held out both his hands, palms up. How he managed to react calmly was beyond me. I was shaking with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. I sent silent, useless orders to my body: Calm down. My breathing was ragged, so I focused on that. Two quick breaths in through the nose, two quick breaths out through the mouth. That helped some. Darren turned and ran toward the master bedroom.

“Stop that peckerwood!” Baseball Bat ordered.

Chain ran toward Darren, with Tire Iron right behind him. They were running right past me. I froze, unsure what to do. Chain ran by. He was swinging his weapon—he passed so close I heard the links clinking even over the roar of my labored breathing.

On impulse, I kicked out—a low, sweeping roundkick. Chain was already past me, but I kicked Tire Iron right in the shins, taking him down. His weapon clunked as it hit the wood floor. He yelled and reached for the tire iron.

I just stood there and watched him grab the tire iron and push himself onto his knees. I knew I should follow up on my kick, but I hadn’t been in a real fight since sixth grade. And those didn’t count as real fights, anyway—they were just stupid schoolyard stuff. Nothing like this.

Tire Iron started to stand, staring at me murderously. If I didn’t do something—now—he’d cave in my skull. I stepped toward him and hit the side of his neck with a palm-heel strike. It’s supposed to stun an opponent by interrupting the blood supply through the jugular, but I never figured I’d have to use it for real. It worked beautifully. The steel bar clattered to the floor, and Tire Iron followed it, falling sideways with a heavy thump.

I stood over him for a second, panting and trembling, and then looked around. Chain was at the back of the living room, chasing Darren, who had disappeared into the master bedroom.

I glanced at Joe in time to see Baseball Bat take a swing at his head, but I was too far away to help. Joe had the presence of mind to step toward Baseball Bat instead of away, so he got clubbed by the guy’s hands instead of taking the murderous hit of the bat’s business end. Still, Joe went down. I screamed, taking a step toward him.

Baseball Bat raised his weapon over his head and moved to meet me. Instinctively, I crouched in a sparring stance, hands up by my chin. My thoughts raced. What could I do? If he chopped down with the bat, maybe I’d sidestep and go for a wrist grab and joint lock.

I heard a noise like a pair of M80 firecrackers behind me. Blam-Blam! Something fell, tinkling to the floor with a noise like ice dropping into a glass. Baseball Bat lowered his weapon and took a step backward, so I risked a glance behind me.

Darren was stalking through the living room, a big chrome pistol clutched in front of him in a two-handed grip. Chain lay beside the sofa; blood gushed from his ruined skull and soaked the rug. My nostrils filled with the copper tang of blood blended with a faint fecal stink. I fought back vomit.

Darren got close enough to see Joe, motionless on the floor of the entryway. Darren screamed—an inhuman, animal yowl. Baseball Bat turned and took a step toward the door. He reached for the doorknob. Blam-Blam! Darren shot him in the back of the head. His face exploded. I heard a thunk as part of it hit the door and then a dull thump as Baseball Bat’s body slumped to the floor. A dark stain marred the door, like someone had hurled a blood-filled water balloon against it.

Tire Iron moaned and pushed himself up on one arm. Darren screamed again.

I shouted, “Darren, take it—”

“Yearrrgh!” Darren pushed the pistol against Chain’s temple. Blam-Blam! His head pretty much burst, showering my legs with blood and bits of hair and skull and brain. The scent of blood and shit was overpowering now.

Joe groaned loudly and rolled over. Darren’s gaze twitched from corpse to corpse, rage disfiguring his face.

I ran for the front door.

Chapter 8

The door snagged on Baseball Bat’s body, but there was enough space for me to slip through. Behind me I heard Joe call out weakly, “Alex . . .” I didn’t care. Didn’t care what he had to say. Didn’t care where I was going, either. I had to get away. Had to leave that horrible, gore-splattered foyer. Had to clear the stench of blood from my nostrils—if that was even possible.

Running through the ashfall wasn’t easy. Water and ash scoured my face. With every step, my feet sank into the gooey mess. It was less like running than doing a fast, high-step march. I couldn’t see very far, and I wasn’t really looking around, but the street seemed deserted. There were no moving vehicles, only half-buried parked cars. No sign of any people. No noise except the thunder. Very little light other than the occasional flash of lightning.

I made it only two blocks before I got too winded to keep going. I’d lost my shoes somewhere, sucked off by the wet-concrete-like ash. I rested my hands on my knees and stood there a minute, panting. The image of Tire Iron’s head exploding invaded my brain. I vomited. The steaks tasted a whole lot worse coming up than they had going down.

I didn’t know if it was running or spewing, but something got me thinking straight again. I needed water, food, and some kind of protection from the ash. Shoes, too. Running around like a madman would get me killed in a hurry. But I couldn’t go back to Darren’s house. I doubted I could ever look at him again without seeing that rage-contorted face. And just thinking about returning to his gore-drenched foyer—no way.

But I had to go somewhere. I dragged myself slowly back down the road toward my house. The ash had permeated my socks and was abrading my skin. Every step hurt the sides of my feet where my skin was soft and thin. The ash caked the inside of my mouth and got into my eyes, making them water and causing me to blink constantly.

The front of my house had collapsed further under the weight of the ash. My room and my sister’s were pretty much pancaked. The gutters had ripped off the house, but we had modern aluminum gutters, unlike Darren’s, so it hadn’t done much damage. The back part of the house looked okay. I found a window the firefighters had left open and climbed in.

The inside wasn’t too bad. A lot of ash had blown in through the open windows, but so long as I didn’t walk in it and stir it up, it didn’t bother me. I checked the faucet in the kitchen sink. It sighed when I opened it, air rushing into empty pipes. No water. I got a warm Coke out of the fridge and used the first swig to rinse my mouth. That got me coughing. When I pulled my arm away from my mouth it was spotted with bloody flecks. That scared me; coughing up blood couldn’t be good. But what could I do about it? I finished off the Coke, slugged down another, and devoured two apples.

I needed to pee. The downstairs bathroom and the one my sister and I shared were in the wrecked part of the house, so I went up the back staircase to the master bath. As I was getting ready to do my business, I thought of something. Grody though it was, I might need the toilet water. The water in the tank would be clean, right? And one of my friends had this cat, George, that always drank from the toilet—it hadn’t killed him. I went downstairs and peed out an open window into the ash.

Back upstairs in my parents’ bedroom, I stripped off the now repulsive clothing Joe had lent me and threw it in the trash. Ash clung to the inside of my underwear. My clothes were all burned or buried at the front of the house, but Dad’s stuff fit me okay. Way too loose in the waist, but otherwise not bad. It was getting cold, which worried me. I thought for a moment and figured out it was the last day of August. The volcano must be messing with the weather somehow. How cold would it get? I had no way to answer that question, so I ignored it for the moment. I put on one of Dad’s long-sleeved shirts over a T-shirt.